Bible Synapse
Seal of Shema, servant of Jeroboam
Object · 8th century BC (probably) · Israel and Judah · also called Shema seal, Megiddo lion seal
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 8th century BC (probably) (the seal, if the king is Jeroboam II)
- Found
- Tel Megiddo, Israel, 1904. Found in March 1904 in Gottlieb Schumacher’s excavations at Megiddo. A cast was made before the original was sent to the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople; it has been missing ever since.
- Now
- Lost (sent to Constantinople soon after its discovery)
- Passages
- 2 Kings 14:23–29, Amos 7:10–11
What it is
An unusually large oval seal of jasper, nearly 4 centimetres across, engraved with a roaring lion and a line of old Hebrew script reading “belonging to Shema, servant of Jeroboam”. It has no hole for a cord, so it was probably set in a ring or mount.
How it connects to the Bible
On seals like this, “servant” of a king is the title of a high royal official. Most scholars take the king to be Jeroboam II of Israel, whose long reign in Samaria is summed up in 2 Kings 14:23–29 and who appears in the story of Amos at Bethel (Amos 7:10–11).
What scholars debate
David Ussishkin argues for Jeroboam I instead. Since the original is lost, the question rests on photographs and casts.